23.2.13

Peaceful co-existence, or gambling uncompromising brinkmanship

.
.
.
.

Iran: Get the Gun Out of Our Face, and We’ll Negotiate

John Glaser, at antiwar.comBoth Nation reporter Robert Dreyfuss and Harvard professor Stephen Walt
point today to a speech given by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, in which he explains why America’s rhetoric about returning to
negotiations are perceived as dishonest. Do read both of their
articles.Khamenei
accurately cites a catalog of aggressive policies Washington has
leveled against Iran, like “crippling” sanctions, surrounding Iran
militarily, supporting Israel as it assassinates Iran’s civilian
scientists, waging cyber-warfare, verbal threats of war, supporting
Iran’s enemies in a deliberate attempt to undermine the regime, etc.
etc. Then he says:

Now the Americans have raised the issue of negotiations
again. They repeat that America is prepared to directly negotiate with
Iran. This is not new. The Americans have repeatedly raised the issue of
negotiations at every juncture. Now their newly appointed politicians
repeat that we should negotiate. And they say that the ball is in Iran’s
court.

It is you who should explain the meaning of negotiations that are
accompanied by pressure and threats. Negotiations are for the sake of
proving one’s goodwill. You commit tens of acts which show lack of
goodwill and then you speak about negotiations. Do you expect the
Iranian nation to believe that you have goodwill?… We do not see any
goodwill.

Speaking a day earlier than Khamenei here, President Ahmadinejad
summed it up more succinctly: “Take your guns out of the face of the
Iranian nation and I myself will negotiate with you.”And Iran’s UN Ambassador Mohammed Khazaee, in a discussion
with former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas
Pickering this month, said: ”As
long as pressure is on Iran, as long as there is a sword on our neck to
come to negotiations, this is not negotiations, therefore Iranians
cannot accept that.”It’s not just Iranians who perceive this underlying theme in the
US-Iran relationship. American academics and officials, experts in US
foreign policy, also recognize it. After the failed talks in 2009 and
2010, wherein Obama ended up rejecting the very deal he demanded the
Iranians accept, as Walt has written,
the Iranian leadership “has good grounds for viewing Obama as
inherently untrustworthy.” Former CIA analyst Paul Pillar has
concurred, arguing that Iran has “ample reason” to believe, “ultimately the main Western interest is in regime change.”And Vali Nasr, former senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s
special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan and a leading Middle
East expert writes in his new book
that, for the Obama administration, “Pressure has become an end in
itself.” They spoke of a dual track that consists of diplomacy and
pressure, but, Nasr writes, it was “not even dual. It relied on one
track, and that was pressure.”“Engagement,” he adds, “was a cover for a coercive campaign of sabotage, economic pressure and cyberwarfare.”Walt wonders out loud why the US seems unwilling to let up on the pressure:

So why do so many smart people keep embracing an approach
to Iran that is internally contradictory and has consistently failed
for more than a decade? I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect it has a
lot to do with maintaining credibility inside Washington. Because Iran
has been demonized for so long, and absurdly cast as the Greatest
National Security Threat we face, it has become largely impossible for
anyone to speak openly of a different approach without becoming
marginalized. Instead, you have to sound tough and hawkish even if you
are in favor of negotiations, because that’s the only way to be taken
seriously in the funhouse world of official Washington (see under: the
Armed Services Committee hearings on Chuck Hagel).

Yeah, it’s that. But it’s also that US grand strategy for a long time
has been to maintain its own hegemony in the resource rich Middle East.
Dominance, not diplomacy, is the goal.

About Me

I have been under state surveillance and covert harassment in the UK since 1985, by MI-5 and their gullible friends where ever they are found, and overt harassment with surveillance since march of 1996, when I submitted my final year law degree dissertation, 'The relationship between the state, the security services and the law'.